Call for Proposals

PCTELA25: Literacy for Liberation: Educating, Amplifying

Call for In-Person Conference Proposals

Proposals are due no later than March 15, 2025.

In-Person Location: Best Western Premier: The Central Hotel and Conference Center 

Address: 800 E Park Dr, Harrisburg, PA 17111

Online Event: Conference Event Platform and Zoom

Dates: October 3rd - 4th, 2025

The potential for education to either liberate or indoctrinate underscores the critical role literacy educators play in both teaching critical thinking and empowering  students —a challenge that remains as relevant today as it was in the past. As English teachers, we possess a remarkable opportunity that we may not always fully recognize: the ability to shape the landscape of literacy education in our very classrooms. Forget about the MLA or Webster’s Dictionary editors; we steer much of the future of the English language and its speakers. Seen this way, literacy education becomes a critical tool for either liberation through critical thinking and leadership, or erasure through conformity. Whether you are teaching kindergarteners their ABCs or teaching tomorrow’s English teachers what “disrespect” in the classroom might really reflect, you have a role to play on the side of liberating minds–share your techniques with us!

PCTELA's 2025 conference explores Literacy for Liberation, examining entrenched educational practices that somehow managed to remain unchallenged even as the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the extent to which these very practices reproduced inequities for tomorrow’s adults. Do you realize how much power you have as a teacher of English? Frederick Douglass once heard his enslaver admonish his wife that “if you teach [him] how to read…It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would…become unmanageable”; in stark contrast, boarding schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School used English-only education as a weapon against Indigenous culture, assimilating as many Native children as possible into mainstream American culture. Modern educators face various challenges, including book bans that marginalize voices and perpetuate systemic inequities, a lack of diversity among Pennsylvania’s educators, post-pandemic learning loss, and difficulties in student engagement and motivation. 

However, as educators we hold more power than we often realize. In your classroom, liberation might look like:

• elevating students’ communities by encouraging stronger partnerships with families and caregivers, particularly those who may feel overlooked or face additional challenges;

• creatively and resourcefully leveraging technology in your rural district to ensure students have access to knowledge, experiences, and cultures beyond their community; or

• defending your students’ right to read works by authors from historically marginalized communities, even when those texts may seem disruptive.

All of us have the tools and the opportunity to cultivate safe or unsafe, fearful or brave spaces for tomorrow’s leaders. If you are a literacy educator who cares about empowering your students and fostering cultures of cooperation, we want to hear what you have to share! Whether you're a curious newcomer or an experienced educator eager to inspire, this is a welcoming space for all to connect and grow together. Join us, and let's create an enriching experience for educators, as we learn from one another and explore how to accept our power and responsibility as literacy teachers!

Here are some questions that might guide ideas for sessions, and we enthusiastically welcome submissions that promote literacy in other ways and to other ends as well:

• Are traditional notions of ELA (Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening) serving the students in our classroom and preparing them to lead critically and empathically? If so, how? If not, why not, and what do we uplift instead, as literacy educators?

• What do inclusive classrooms that validate students' experiences and foster empathy for diverse backgrounds actually look like, realistically? Reflecting on your own education, what strategies made you feel seen and heard, and how can you implement these in your K-12 classroom to encourage understanding and inclusivity?

• Can educators ethically integrate AI technologies into literacy education to promote equity and accessibility, preserve student writers’ unique voices, and promote appropriate engagement with and critique of these burgeoning technologies? How? 

• Which texts are you and your students’ drawn to? Are there any genres, perspectives, or stories absent from our curricula or libraries? How can we strike a balance between classic literature and modern works in our teaching? In what ways can we harness the power of reading to broaden our students' comprehension of the world around them?

• Can technology tools and media promote equity, socio-emotional learning, and critical thinking in literacy education? How have we learned to leverage these tools since the COVID-19 pandemic, and where did we fall short? What did we miss, and how can we integrate those lessons today?

• Considering the value of social-emotional learning in the ELA classroom, what can reading our feelings and the feelings of others teach us about reading fiction/literature (and vice-versa)? How does emotional literacy contribute to stronger readers, writers, speakers, listeners, critical thinkers and leaders of tomorrow?

• How can we experiment across various forms and genres of writing, creation, or performance to empower students to express their unique identities, and/or invite them to understand the experiences of those different from themselves?

• How can educators, administrators, students, caregivers, and community members collaborate to create equitable and transformative ELA education environments that empower diverse students through literacy and critical thinking skills?

Potential topics could encompass lesson and learning unit ideas, innovative technology integration, text selection (or defense) in a censorship-friendly era, collaborative initiatives within schools or communities, broader school-wide or district-level programs, etc. Please note that session titles do not need to include the keywords or the conference theme.

Strands:

• Audience Strands: 

  • Elementary Education

  • Middle School

  • High School

  • College

  • General

• Format Strands: 

  • Lecture-style: Share your work or ideas in a standard presentation style. These sessions will not be interactive and the audience can sit back to listen and learn. 

  • Interactive/Workshop: In these hands-on sessions, attendees will expect to be engaged doing independent or group learning to some extent. 

  • The Future Is Now Roundtable Session: These sessions are for pre-service (graduate and undergraduate) teacher candidates to share their work. Each presenter will be paired with one or two others on a related topic and each presenter will have 10 to 15 minutes to share their work. This may be findings from field experience in the classroom or a research paper/project for a class or capstone course. These can be submitted now if a professor and pre-service teacher have a project in mind, but they may also be submitted in September 2025 once the fall semester begins.

• Specialty Group Focus:

  • National Writing Project 

  • Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE)

  • Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA)

  • Kappa Delta Pi (KDP) Honor Society

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Deadline: March 15, 2025

Registration: As per the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) policy, all in-person presenters must register and pay conference fees. Acceptance of a proposal does not offer a reduced or waived registration fee. 

Mission Statement 

The mission of the 2025 PCTELA conference is to support and encourage educators as they explore and learn about effective practices that inspire students to wonder and delve more deeply into a diverse world of texts, perspectives, and multimodal literacy experiences. We seek to provide a safe space for educators of all backgrounds to collaborate, explore, and return home from this journey as empowered leaders within their own school and community. As an affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), we follow NCTE’s Mutual Respect and Anti-Harassment Policy.